A unique blog dedicated to covering the worlds of book publishing and the news media, revealing creative ideas, practical strategies, interesting stories, and provocative opinions. Along the way, discover savvy but entertaining insights on book marketing, public relations, branding, and advertising from a veteran of two decades in the industry of book publishing publicity and marketing.

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Friday, June 28, 2013

Times Square Hustle A Model For Authors

While
walking through Times Square with my eight-year-old son the other day, I saw
the world through his fresh pair of eyes and found the hustle and bustle of the
world’s most famous playground to serve as a model for ambitious writers
looking to market and promote their books.

The
little guy had never walked through this part of the city at night before. He was in awe of the bright lights, crowds of
people, and the street peddlers. He was
like a tourist, though the city is in his backyard as a resident of neighboring
Westchester.

I
grew up a city boy, making hundreds of trips on the subway from Brooklyn, to
the core of a city that always has a flow of activity. It is never boring here.

My
son observed how a lot of places sold similar stuff – NY-centric T-shirts, artwork, hats, and plastic memorabilia immortalizing landmarks and
skyscrapers. He saw that the way to win
business depended on a number of factors:

1.How
attractive your display is (colors and lights help)

2.Your
price (we were drawn to the $1 skyline photos)

3.Opportunity
(a food vendor comes in handy when walking a lot)

4.The
merchant that stayed open later won the business of stores that closed earlier

5.When
you have a crowd gathered, sell anything – someone’s buying it

Authors
and publishers can learn from this.
Granted, most of the consumers came from other countries and states, or
the suburbs, so they tend to buy useless things that get your attention for the
moment. But when you’re a hardened New
Yorker exposed to this daily, you tune it all out.

Authors
and publishers need their version of Times Square, an area dedicated to books
and all things literary. Consumers like
book fairs. We need more of them –
permanently. There should be a district
in every city and town that caters to the arts, where a few blocks are
dedicated to galleries, bookstores, and other intellectual experiences. Where as a red light district caters to the
x-rated side of humanity, we need a green light district that showers us with
the thinking side of life.

Times
Square will always be around. It’s a big
mall of theaters, restaurants, hotels, stores, and street vendors and
scammers. The three-card Monty tables,
hookers, and drug dealers have long been pushed aside, but the flashing-light
streets are still littered with people looking for entertainment who themselves
become part of the act.

Times
Square seems insane to an eight-year-old.
He noticed how no one paid attention to the traffic lights, including
us. I told him that the rules are
different here – you react to your surroundings.

He
noticed a heavy police presence. I told
him crowds of people invite criminals and terrorists.

He
didn’t seem to need a deeper explanation.

I
showed him where the New Year’s Eve ball drops from but he couldn’t imagine how
that happens – a crystal ball falling from a building and not breaking.

He
wasn’t fazed by all of the TV screen billboards sucking up the real estate on
the sides of tall buildings. His
generation is used to digital bombardment.

As
our journey wrapped up and we picked up my wife and daughter (they saw Annie,
my five-year-old's first Broadway play), we realized we’d spent several hours
walking the streets. We had a memento to
share – a street artist’s charcoal sketch of the two of us. It was terrible – my son looked like a girl
and I looked like a freak.

Lesson
learned: Some things sound like a cool idea, but don’t always turn out that
way. The $15 piece of failed art was our
proof that if you sell something, someone will buy it.

About Me

Brian Feinblum, the creator and author of BookMarketingBuzzBlog, is the chief marketing officer for the nation's largest book promotions firm, Media Connect (www.Media-Connect.com), formerly Planned Television Arts, and has been involved in book publicity and marketing since 1989. He has served several book publishing companies as a publicist, book editor, and acquisitions editor. Brian, who earned a BA in English from Brooklyn College, became a published author in 1995 when he penned The Florida Homeowner, Condo and Co-Op Handbook. He resides in Westchester, New York with his wife, two young children, and an English Bulldog.